‘Red Riding Hood’ review: My what a big letdown you are

March 12, 2011 | 10:27 a.m.

Los Angeles Times film critic Betsy Sharkey went into the woods with “Little Red Riding Hood,” here’s an excerpt from her review…

"Red Riding Hood"

The horror-tinged romance of “Red Riding Hood” is at its heart nothing more than a fashionable fairytale version of what’s all the rage in teen love stories these days. The basic formula includes a moody beauty falling for the wrong boy, who may actually be a vampire-alien-werewolf-whatever. Can “Pinocchio at 15” be far behind?

With “my, what big eyes you have” Amanda Seyfried as the girl in the scarlet cloak and that edgy shaman of young angst, Catherine Hardwicke, in the director’s chair, the movie comes with great expectations. So it kills me to say — or at least it bothers me a lot — that what we have here is a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Gorgeously shot, smartly conceived, cleverly cast, badly executed — the lush medieval beauty here is at best only skin deep. If this were a four-letter-word newspaper, you would see a string of them now. In Hardwicke we have a director who understands and is able to channel onscreen the impossible ache of the adolescent girl with a rare authenticity. Probably best realized in 2003’s “Thirteen,” and at the core of 2008’s “Twilight,” the opening gambit in the current phenom, it surfaces here in fits and starts…

I absolutely LOVED IT!!! It was beautifully cast..amadnda is good in every role she takes, shiloh was sexy as he was meant to be, gary oldman is plain genius and so on. It had gorgeous scenery and a suspensful feel…all in all i came out very very happy and i will be purchasing it :]]]]

Couldn't agree more!! A SUPER LETDOWN!!
I wanted to like it, despite being very aware of the fact that I wasn't the target audience…
I was ready to excuse, its misjudged use of music, its blatant attempts to copy the twilight movies, its OTT acting by Gary Oldman… but in the end it’s too silly for genre lovers, or those who were looking for something more refined like “in the company of the wolves” for example, and it’s too close to Twilight (almost like a copy of it); so much so that it actually annoyed what were meant to be the fans. Also, it must be said, a lot of those Twilight lovers came from the original books, here it all just relies on the similarities with another saga.
MY FULL REVIEW wp.me/p19wJ2-kn